


Blowing Smoke

by likeadeuce



Category: Avengers Academy
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brandon and Maddy are best friends, but they're still learning to be honest with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blowing Smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HardModePlus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardModePlus/gifts).



> Thank you to Harmonyangel for beta-reading and providing great feedback, including suggesting the title (which comes from a song by Kacey Musgraves).
> 
> Thanks also to Renata and Sigrid and everybody else who had to listen to my theories about vaping.

Since the last time Brandon saw her, Maddy has taken up smoking. Or – not smoking. Vaping. Those electronic cigarettes that you load up with liquid nicotine, and blow out in rings of water vapor that smells like cinnamon, or vanilla, or sour apples.

Maddy lights one up now, then crosses her legs and sits in the middle of her bed before asking, "Do you mind?" The last part should have come first, probably, but it's not like Brandon is a position to lecture any other human being about good manners.

Brandon shrugs although he does, mind, kind of. It would be worse if his friend was smoking real cigarettes, of course, with the cancer and the stained teeth and the mucus. (He did an ad for a youth anti-smoking campaign, once, and the litany of downsides really stuck with him.) E-cigarettes bug him, though, because they're the kind of fad that inspires articles on Buzzfeed about cool things the young people are doing these days. Brandon hates these fads because he can't figure out whether they're _really_ cool things, or lame things that people pretend are cool so that their website gets pageviews. He's pretty much concluded that vaping is lame, because the main people he can think of who do it are (a) Robert Pattinson and (b) Brandon's mom. Mom has even been trying to get Brandon to smoke e-cigs in public, which she says could be worth a big endorsement deal, "just like the one Rob Pattinson has." Brandon gave that the response that deserved: 1. We've already taken money from the anti-tobacco lobby for me to talk about _not_ smoking, 2. Rob Pattinson is fucking ugly, 3. You're the worst mom ever and the house smells like green apples.)

He's not going to tell Maddy that he minds her smoking, though. After who-knew-how-many-months spent with her body in a gaseous state, she's gotten her solid form back (she's been "fixed," as she puts it, though Brandon and most of the people he spends time around these days would say "depowered,") and he guesses she can do whatever she wants with it. 

Besides, Maddy has invited him to visit her in her home, where she's gone back to living the low-profile life of a perfectly ordinary high school student. Between Avengers Academy and his – well, call it an acting career, call it activism work – he's gotten to know plenty of people. But his life isn't exactly overrun with ordinary kids who want him to be their friend and hang out at their house. 

Also, just at this moment, he doesn't feel in any position to antagonize Maddy considering the amount of emotional ammunition he's just given her, if she should choose to use it against him.

"So." Maddy pulls the cigarette from her mouth and blows a steamy smoke ring that rises and evaporates in front of her. "You had sex with the Make-a-Wish guy?"

There's probably a way to object to your best friend teasing you about your sexual exploits and sound dignified, but Brandon's response comes out more like a yelp. When he looks through his fingers, he can see that she's grinning, so he sighs, lowers his hand, and says. "Make-a-Wish is the cancer one, not the gay one. My life is not a John Green novel. I went out with an "It Gets Better" guy, which is totally different – a guy, by the way, who made an Internet video where he asked me to come to his prom –" 

"Yeah, genius. I'm the one who forwarded it to you."

"I know you did, I'm just pointing it out. Jonathan made a video and put it on the Internet in which he asked me, a person he had never met, to go on a date with him, because he liked a video that _I_ put on the Internet. Which might suggest to you that he was not exactly a shrinking violet –" Brandon pauses. Is using 'violet' in that context homophobic? Just in case, he amends, "Not a shy delicate flower. He's someone who is very knowledgeable about my life and my history and has no problem letting it be clear what he wants and – you get what I'm saying."

"Yes," Maddy says with a solemn nod. "You lost it to a groupie."

"No!" When Maddy falls back on the bed, laughing, Brandon flops down beside her and says, "I mean, yes, I guess I was kind of calling him a groupie. But after that one date we kept in touch, we – texted and stuff, and then it turned out I was going to be at Mom's place in Florida and he had a spring break service project to rebuild houses that got wrecked last hurricane season. So I ended up joining him for that and, well, you saw my Instagram–"

"And Twitter. And Facebook."

"Excuse me, Miss 'Let Me Tweet Pictures of My Brunch from Seven Different Angles'."

"A single picture would not have conveyed the majesty of those waffles. Doooo go on."

"And then we went back home and he stayed a few more days and – well, Mom went on a music video shoot for the weekend and said, 'Don't do anything I wouldn't do.'" He makes an appalled face to convey his reaction, sending Maddy back into convulsive laughter. His mother hadn't actually said that, though the real conversation had been less pithy but just as awkward, so he doesn't feel bad about spinning it into comedy. "And once I managed to get over the trauma of thinking about what that might mean –"

Brandon shrugs, suddenly unwilling to press the joke further. "It was a nice weekend." This part is true. At the start, Brandon had been petrified at actually being alone with his –boyfriend? – as though he was finally going to get called out for holding himself up as some kind of expert on being gay, when it was obvious that big-eyed, golden-haired Jonathan knew _way_ more about everything than Brandon did. Then they started making out, and Brandon thought, oh. Big-eyed, golden-haired Jonathan knows way more about everything than you do, and he is _really into you right now_ , and none of this is in any way a bad thing. "Really nice," he repeats.

There's silence for a moment, and then when Maddy seems to realize he isn't going to elaborate, she says, "Good for you, then," and pats his hand.

She probably doesn't mean that to be as patronizing as it comes off – when did she get to be the concerned, mature one, exactly? Still, he remembers her earlier comment and pulls his hand away. "I didn't _lose_ anything, you know."

Maddy pulls the cigarette away from her mouth and studies him for a long moment, before she says, "I thought you hadn't slept with a guy before."

"Well, not – No, not before this. But I wasn't a _virgin_." She's still staring like she has no idea what he's talking about, which forces him to sit up, look down at her and say, "I've slept with girls."

"Huh." She looks genuinely flustered, and says, "I guess I thought that whole 'overcompensating heterosexual stud' thing was an act."

"Well." He coughs. Maddy's vapor smells like cinnamon and maybe it's getting to him. "It wasn't exactly _not_ an act? But I had stuff to work through. I know I told you about this."

"And I know you _didn't_."

He thinks about it and he has to concede. "Okay, I told Julie Power about this."

"Oh yes. Lightspeed, the breakout star of Power Pack. People are always getting me and her mixed up."

He can't quite parse Maddy's tone. "Is this important? It bothers you that there are things I haven't told you about me?"

"It interests me," she says, "that you've told me all kinds of things but you edited that out."

He thinks, then, of Maddy climbing into his bed at the Academy and chattering away until dawn, while he absorbed everything she said and didn't make a move on her. "It's not because I liked them better than you. It was before I even knew you," he says. "Every girl I ever slept with was introduced to me by either (a) my mother or (b) Norman Osborn, so that should tell you everything you need to know."

Now Maddy sits up. "You think I'm jealous of other girls," she says, "because you didn't try to have sex with me while I was incorporeal?" Her fist clenches around the stupid cigarette thing; he can see how fast she's breathing by the motion of the vapor.

"Are you _mad_?" he demands. "You did jump in bed with me, back then. It's not like I'm taking some enormous, illogical leap by thinking you were kind of into me at some point. I mean why else --?" He stops, realizing what he's almost said.

Maddy tilts her head and peers at him. "You mean, why else would I want to spend time with you, if I didn't have some hopeless crush?"

Brandon scratches his head, trying not to look straight at her. "Well, back then everybody else was pairing up. So I guess I just thought you were lonely and I was – there –"

"And you stuck up for me, which was something I had basically zero experience with at the time. You let me prattle at you, and you got my jokes and – well, we got to be friends."

"That doesn't seem like a lot to go on," he says. "Back then we were sort of stuck together. But now? You've got this nice normal life, and you're going to get a scholarship from the Future Foundation and go to a great college. I'm going to be a fifth-string Avenger and you don't even _believe_ in the Avengers. Except for telling stories about my stupid love life so we can make jokes at my expense, I don't even know why I'm here."

"Oh," Maddy says, "I see what my mistake was."

"Yeah," he says. "Hanging out with me at all."

"No, dumbass," she says, and Brandon is rather unprepared for her to plop down beside him and give him a hug. Unprepared, but he doesn't mind. "I assumed I knew everything about you. But there was actually a lot of stuff you weren't telling me." She pecks him on the cheek. "You are going to be a _great_ Avenger," she tells him. "Or a TV star, or a motivational speaker or whatever the hell you want. And maybe it will take you a few tries to figure out what that is. But you're stuck with me as a friend, for all kinds of good reasons and some terrible ones. It's not something you have to deserve, although for the record, you deserve it plenty. And you shouldn't be afraid to be honest with me. All right?"

"All right." He lets out a sigh and leans into the hug. "I'm glad you've got your body back, Mads. Because I could use some hugs right now. And? Maybe we could ease up on the jokes about my love life. I know I'm an easy target, but I'm sorting some things out that are pretty stressful for me."

"Oh." Maddy winces. "Sorry."

"It's fine," he says. "I've dished out enough snark at other people that I feel like I ought to be able to take it but –"

"It's okay," she reassures him. "No apologies needed. Anything else?"

"Yeah." He clears his throat. "I know it's your house, but I really hate the smell of those fucking cigarettes."

"Oh." She scrambles upright to shut the thing off and put it away. "I'm sorry, it's just –" She comes and sits next to him again, leaning into his shoulder. "I never stopped wanting my solid body back, but it's been more of an adjustment than I expected." Maddy releases a final ring of cinnamon-scented steam. "This helps me feel a little more connected to who I was."

"Oh," he winces. "I'm sorry. That really hadn't occurred to me. I thought you were just being trendy."

She laughs. "Well, maybe that, too, a little. But it's okay. I really can quit whenever I want."

"It's no big deal," he says.

"It's okay." She repeats, and squeezes his hand. "And as long as we're on the subject of smells and being honest? I'm _really_ glad you quit with the Axe Body Spray when you came out of the closet."

"Uggh," Brandon says. "Don't remind me."


End file.
